I have even noticed some people sincerely alarmed that cell phones are capable of popping pop corn.

But before you decide not to take your hibachi grill to the next tailgate party in lieu of your cell phones, do a little test: Repeat the experiment you saw in the video, but substitute a thermometer or even your finger for the kernel or corn. Did the thermometer temperature rise? Did you finger get singed? Try it with 3,4 or even a dozen cell phones and see what happens.

The reason I am confident that you won’t yell in pain and flame me in the comments section is that the Federal Communications Commission will not allow private communications to exceed even a few watts. Look at your wireless router as an example. You might be able to find an internet hack to reprogram the firmware so that it will output (illegally) a little over 15 watts of transmission power, but not more.

Your cell phone uses significantly less power than your wireless router. If you don’t believe me, remove your cell phone battery and connect it to a flashlight bulb. Watch how long the bulb will operate before draining the battery. Also, feel the heat from the lightbulb – is it enough to cook popcorn?

Your microwave oven takes about 5 minutes to pop popcorn, but its power output is typically over 1,000 watts. So, although the frequencies of the microwave oven and your cell phone might be uncomfortably close, there is a huge difference in power output.

Nevertheless, the people who created that cell-phone hoax video might have been trying to make another point: the frequency of the electromagnetic waves that your cell phone emits are close to those of your microwave oven. Microwave ovens work on the principle of the oven’s electromagnetic waves vibrating water molecules at high frequency. This motion creates heat, and probably some damage to your food’s structure too. Water molecules are not the only ones that vibrate, but this depends on a complicated explanation of harmonic resonance which we will not discuss here.

Cell phones probably also create those vibrations in nearby matter: Your ear, skin, and possibly even your brain. Ionizing radiation has been known to alter DNA molecules, and thereby might cause mutations, some of which might develop into cancer.

Since I consistently use 2000 – 3000 airtime minutes on my
T-Mobile Android Phone on a regular basis, I searched for a method to decrease the radiation exposure just to be safe.

I bought a bluetooth headset, but the headset also exposes one’s head and body to radiation, although at a different frequency, but that still did not leave me confident of my safety.

The best solution I could find was the Phone Lab’s Dock and Talk cell phone docking station. This device is great for home or office use because it connects your cell phone to a standard home or office telephone, allowing you to place your cell phone at a safe distance away while you talk over a wire-connected phone line. This also improves your ability to use features like free weekend and nighttime minutes, or to listen to calls over a speaker-phone:

Oh, and by the way, watch this for our conclusion…

If you know any knuckleheads who still believe that a cell phone can pop popcorn, then share this link with them by hitting the FB LIKE button up top, or the TWEET THIS button below.